Cepheid Variable
by Beast of Burton
Summary: Cepheid variable: a class of periodic pulsating variable star that obeys a period-luminosity relationship discovered by Henrietta Leavitt. An important indicator of distance on an extragalactic scale. A candle in the void.


"We really appreciate your help with this, Dr. Anwar."

"My pleasure," Suvi assured with her best professional smile before glancing back down at the readout she had been provided. "The Nexus science team is eager to see how this experiment progresses. It'll be a bigger step forward than most people realize if we can jumpstart the viability of these hybrids. There won't be a Vault on every world to terraform the soil to our exact specifications."

"Not to mention there's no telling how long it will take for the worlds that do have a Vault to normalize," a young turian woman chimed in from the other side of the laboratory. "Even the Pathfinder can't accelerate the passage of time. I mean I don't think she can, right?"

"Not yet, at any rate," Suvi confirmed with a chuckle as she started towards the hab door. "Thanks again, everyone. Take care."

The heat outside the building was brutal, even in the relative safety of environmental shielding. The days were long on Eos, and the noonday sun beat down on the settlement at Prodromos for hours at a time. Ten steps in to the half mile back to the Tempest, and Suvi had already broken out in a sweat. She had no idea how the teams stationed here managed to get anything done in weather like this.

"Looking a little hot under the collar there, Dr. Anwar," a familiar voice said as the crunch of armored boots on the sand came up behind her.

"What an astute observation, Pathfinder Ryder," Suvi retorted smartly, unable to keep from smiling in the face of Sara's infectious grin as they fell into sync. "I'm afraid I'm an embarrassment to my genetics. My father's family only left Syria fifty years ago, but I've never seen a real desert outside the vids."

A sickening throb of hollowness hit her so hard she nearly missed the next step. The day her grandparents and infant father had taken the shuttle to New Glasgow was _six hundred_ and fifty years ago. Her father was dead, along with her mother and grandmother and every person she had ever known.

But instead of tripping on her own feet, a gloved hand wrapped around her own and set it on the warm, grit blasted plating on the inside of Sara's crooked arm.

"Sounds like you could use an escort back to the lovely climate controlled ship by a dashing, very experienced Latina who definitely did not grow up on a space station and only make her first planetfall at age nineteen."

Sara knew; Suvi could see it at a glance, from the way she straightened to her tallest even through the exhausting weight of heat and armor to the gentleness of her grasp, so far from what the touch of pneumatically enhanced polymer should have been. Sara Ryder was the sort to laugh at the dark, to fill emptiness with sound and light no matter the consequence, and never leave anyone alone in it. Suvi felt better for it, even through the lingering pain in her chest, and warmed beyond the power of the blistering sun.

"Nineteen? Didn't you join the Alliance as early as they allowed?"

"Well, yeah; but Basic was on Luna. I said _planetfall_ , Doc; aren't you supposed to be a scientist or something? You geeks are usually such a smart bunch..."

Suvi turned and smacked Sara across the shoulder with her free hand, and Sara took it with an expression that suggested nothing had ever delighted her more.

* * *

By the second month of their deployment, the rest of the crew seemed to finally be used to Suvi's admittedly idiosyncratic method of problem solving. Kallo had been distraught the first time she abruptly quit the bridge and starting wandering through the upper deck, running the numbers of the day's complication under her breath. She hadn't even noticed him trailing after her for a good quarter hour. Poor man.

Her most productive rounds were always laps around the launch bay, particularly if she managed to catch the ground team's daily PT. She always worked better with sound around her, and the racket of people shouting over the grating music Liam insisted on for motivation reminded her of her uni days.

As such, she was predictably distracted when her fourth circuit of the day brought her bodily into Gil.

"Oof," he grunted, holding up his hands as Suvi jumped back in alarm. "No, no, don't even start. I should know better than to park myself on the track. You alright?"

"Fine," Suvi insisted, still a bit winded from the shock. She'd completely lost her train of thought, but she'd been in a rut that was becoming recursive for the last ten minutes anyways. "How are you? I feel like I haven't seen you in days."

"That's because someone has to keep the drive core purring," Gil replied, stretching his arms over his head before resuming his position leaning against the guard rail. "Sometimes I like to stop and watch the hooligans for a few minutes. Noise unsticks the gears, y'know?"

"I do." She turned to take the spot next to him, learning her arms down on the metal railing. They were fighting one another two on one, with Drack and Liam approximating either referees or inciters. They both cheered loudly when Jaal charged Sara, only for her to rather deftly use his own momentum to flip him over her shoulders and slam him flat on his back. She took half a step back, obviously pleased with herself, only to have Cora catch her right in the jaw with a fist.

"Ah, son of a bitch!" Sara said in something between a snarl and a laugh, stooping over slightly and holding up a hand as Cora folded her arms over her chest. "I know, I know; watch the corners. Next time it'll be a kett with a shotgun, blah, blah, blah."

"Bit weird, innit?" Gil asked as Suvi stared down, unnervingly aware of the blood dripping thickly from Sara's mouth and nose as she bore Cora's lecture. "After the Vaults and everything, I sort of figured she was invincible. Or at least lucky enough to fake it. Dunno if I feel better knowing she can bleed."

Suvi wasn't sure either. The dichotomy used to be easier to hold; the Pathfinder was a beacon held up by the Initiative as a sign of things finally, _finally_ starting to change for the better, and Sara Ryder was just the person chosen to fill that role. The Pathfinder required the regular input of an experienced cross-discipline expert to make sense of an entire galaxy's worth of new science, and Suvi was confident in her ability to serve that need. At brass tacks, the Pathfinder was the only reason Suvi wasn't still holed up in the back corner of the Nexus lab, reducing people into data that could be analyzed as worthy or unworthy of the resources necessary for life.

Sara was less than what the Initiative leadership made her out to be, certainly, but who wouldn't look wanting when expected to measure up to the slapdash mythology of a starving people? Suvi didn't hold it against her. For the first few weeks, it actually made her pleasantly approachable. The work was hard, and often fumbling, but two months of it had produced an honest to goodness colony on Eos, and set the groundwork for another on Voeld.

That was the root of the problem, in the end. Suvi had grown a deep respect for the Pathfinder, but a deeper fondness for Sara. She was charming and brash and threw herself headlong into danger at the slightest provocation. She laughed often, and bled frequently. She was remarkable woman, but had shown herself to be just as prone to error and uncertainty as any other.

"Ten laps, Ryder. Vetra, Liam; you're working with Drack," Cora instructed. Sara groaned dramatically, but started jogging anyways. Her path took her directly under the walkway on the upper deck, and despite the protest she kept pace like a metronome. The sound of her boots on the metal grating was solid and steady.

The rhythm returned Suvi's mind to numbers, and she continued on her way.

* * *

Three hours had passed since they left the infiltration point, three long, stressful hours of jumping between the Tempest's readings and the ground team's burst communications of data from the Archon's ship, when the audio channel of Suvi's omnitool click on loud enough to make her jump.

"Dr. Anwar, please report to the Pathfinder's quarters," SAM said into her ear. "I believe there is a malfunction in the QEC console that may interrupt my connection with the ground team."

"I'm on it," Suvi said without hesitation, pushing away from her station and dashing for the ladder to the lower deck. She heard Kallo say something, but did not register more than the confusion in his voice.

"Alright, SAM; walk me through what you're seeing," she said as she entered the room and made her way to the display at Sara's desk. She stopped short when she heard the door hiss shut far too quickly and turned around just in time to see the lock flash red.

"I was dishonest with you before, Dr. Anwar. I apologize. There is nothing wrong with my connection."

"Then why –"

"The Pathfinder is currently caught in a containment field with the rest of the ground team. In order to reset the field, I will need to stop her heart."

"You'll _what_?"

"It is the only viable option given the urgency of the circumstances. I am initiating the process as we speak." SAM paused for a moment, leaving Suvi alone with a sickening feeling not unlike being tossed, weighted, into a cold river.

"Sara would not want you to hear this over comms," SAM admitted. "Now attempting resuscitation."

"SAM?" Suvi asked weakly, watching the dark, distant outline of the Archon's ship, still tangled and spinning with the radio silent Parchero.

"No response. Attempting resuscitation." Another beat passed, along with the longest three second of Suvi's life, before SAM said the five best words she had ever heard.

"The Pathfinder has regained consciousness."

" _Ohthankgoodness_ ," she nearly wheezed as her stomach lurched back to where it belonged.

"Would you like me to open a line of communication with the Pathfinder?" SAM asked.

"No." Suvi swallowed down the lingering nausea of disorientation and shook her head. "No, she's got enough to –"

Harsh breathing crackled over SAM's console before she could finish. "That's twice now I've come back from the dead," Sara's voice said. "Can't say the experience is improving."

Suvi laughed wetly as the audio clicked off. She scrubbed a hand over her face and stared at SAM's impassively blue projection.

"Why did you do this?" she asked.

"Sara has a deep fear of forcing you to listen to her death. While the probability of this maneuver's failure was low, I felt…compelled to shield you from witnessing it directly." The implication of the words pricked in Suvi's chest, bright and sharp and unmistakable.

"You're incredible, you know?" she said softly. "Both of you."

"Thank you, Suvi," SAM replied as the door to the room hissed open again. "I have transmitted readings of the containment field to your station on the bridge, should you wish to analyze them."

"Right." Work now, wonderful, terrifying feelings later.

* * *

"Suvi, before you go could I…can I show you something?"

"Of course," Suvi yawned, stretching out her shoulders as she pushed back from her station. "Are the aft sensor readings still coming in wonky? I think I may need to adjust the processing algorithm again, once the numbers stop blurring together."

"No, it's not that," Kallo replied, glancing over his shoulder with an expression Suvi could most closely relate to the word 'conflicted'. "It's just I know you and Ryder are doing…I forget the word; whatever bizarrity it is you humans do to each other before being involved. Has she seemed alright to you lately?"

"Well before you said that I would've said she's been fine," Suvi frowned, bracing a hand against the back of Kallo's chair to get a better look at the log opening on his display. "We've all been busy; survey runs are never a fun ride for anyone –"

"I don't think she's sleeping," Kallo interrupted, swiping his hand over the personal maintenance logs to collate all the records tagged _S._ _Ryder_. "I can only pull today's because she's been going in and clearing her's out before Lexi's report runs, but it's been like this for more than a week now. Lags getting off-shift, less than three hours of dead time, then a cold shower and a ratio of instant coffee to water that I can only assume is a large cup of caffeine sludge before jumping back on-shift hours before she's due."

Kallo twisted himself around to look at Suvi as she read over the entries herself. "I'll talk to her," she said as the log flashed another delivered ration of bathing water, unheated. "Thanks, Kallo. Have a good night."

It took a good deal of effort to conceal habits when living in a metal tube with ten other people, making Sara's developing moments even more troubling. Suvi was still compiling statistics on the side effects of sleep deprivation by the time she reached the ship's lav.

"I know, I know," she heard as the door hissed open, the words muffled by the towel Sara was scrubbing over her head. "I'm five minutes over. Cut a girl some slack, LT; it's been a rough…oh." She stopped herself short when she caught a glance of Suvi in the mirror.

"Hey," she said with an uneasy smile. "You're not Cora."

"I'm not. And you've had a little more than one rough night, haven't you?" Sara turned and leaned against the sink, fiddling with the edge of her damp towel and steadfastly ignoring eye contact.

"Not gonna turn me in to Lexi, are you?" she asked.

"Not if you talk to me."

"It's nothing. Just a bad habit I fell into. I'll kick it in no time and everything will be back to –"

"Sara," Suvi said, fighting the urge to smile at the way Sara flinched away from the tone of voice alone. "Just talk to me. Please?" Sara's shoulders fell as she sighed.

"Bad dreams. Falling, suffocating, exaltation; the whole nine yards. Nothing a grown damn woman shouldn't be able to handle." She paused, laughing derisively at herself. "Who's got time to deal with PTSD these days, anyways?"

Suvi didn't dignify that with an answer, choosing instead to take the four steps across the room to take Sara by the hand and pull her away from the sink.

"Where are we going?" Sara asked, allowing herself to be easily lead wherever Suvi wanted to go.

"Your room," Suvi answered, adding on a stern, "To sleep," that caused Sara's dawning leer to fall into comic disappointment. "Personal contact does wonders for insomnia, and you won't be getting close to anywhere with me until I see you back in a healthy circadian rhythm."

"Duly noted." The voice Sara used was plainly supposed to be low and seductive, but the yawn between the words rather diminished the effect. Despite her protests, it only took the time between Suvi depositing her on the sofa and returning with the astrophysics journal she was working her way through between shifts for Sara to start dozing off.

Ten minutes after she laid her head against Suvi's shoulder, she was sound asleep.

* * *

For a moment, she almost managed to convince herself that it was simple. The smell of steeping tea, the mug-warmed hand resting against her cheek, the gentle press of an easy smile against her own lips. Her eyes closed to the multitude of foreign stars on the other side of the window, her mind drifted away from the frantic maths of survival. She was just a girl, being kissed by another.

But when it ended, the reality of the situation rushed back into the vacuum.

She was still a scientist and despite everything that had transpired since they first left the Nexus, every look and smile and quiet moment they had spent alone together, the fact of the matter could not be denied. Sara was a terminal flirt. The chances that this moment meant to her the same thing it did to Suvi were low to the point of being non-existent.

"Don't do this to me, Sara," she said softly, chest tight and spirits falling as she opened her eyes again. "Not unless you mean it."

"And if I do mean it?" The question startled her more than it should have, sent her stumbling for an answer in a way few things had ever done.

"You, I mean…really?"

"Yes, Suvi." Sara grinned, taking her hand away but staying close. "I'm really serious about this. You. Us."

"I…well. Wow." Suvi felt unsteady in the best way, full of light and laughter and the bright, wide sweep of the unknown. Sara seemed to look as though she felt the same, in her silly way; winking over the rim of her mug only to half-choke on a mouthful of tea.

"Yikes, that's still really hot," she croaked, smiling sheepishly, and Suvi could do nothing but laugh. She stepped forward and kissed Sara's too-warm mouth once, twice, before leaning her head down against Sara's shoulder. Months of working together day in and day out, and it took until that very moment to realize that the Pathfinder who projected as larger than life was easily no more than five foot three.

"Kallo needs me back on the bridge before we get much closer to Faross," she mumbled into Sara's jacket.

"Damn right he does. I don't want to be anywhere near the Scourge without you up there." Suvi felt one last press of lips against her hair as she took a step back to gather herself. Her whole chest went fluttery at the look of happiness and pride Sara fixed her with. "I've got a pile of data pads to get through anyways. Wanna grab something to eat after your shift? I heat up a mean MRE."

"I'd really like that," Suvi replied, smiling like a fool.

* * *

"Pathfinder on deck," Kallo said absently, not bothering to look up from his display as the door to the bridge hissed open. Suvi grinned at the snort Sara made as she entered the room. "You know my first CO rolls over in his grave every time you say that, right?"

The steady clang of her boots on the metal floor stopped several steps behind Suvi's station, maintaining the respectful distance they tried to give each other when on duty. "Could I steal your science officer a few minutes early?"

"Of course, Ryder. You two have a good evening," Kallo replied in a tone Suvi could immediately tell was too casual. He avoided her attempt to make eye contact as she turned her chair around to stand, and seemed to be poorly smothering a smile.

Sara looked to be just as complicit in whatever was happening, and more sharply dressed than Suvi had seen her before. Dark, well fitted trousers and a clean, pressed shirt rolled up to the elbows. Even her boots were shined.

"You're up to something," Suvi declared, eyeing Sara suspiciously even as she accepted the chivalrous hand extended to help her up. "The pair of you."

"Who's says I'm up to anything?" Sara replied innocently. "It's like a girl can't even take you out to dinner. I even saved my last coffee ration for you."

"And I've never done anything wrong. Ever," Kallo added.

"You two are the most transparent excuses for –" Suvi found herself cut off by a gentle hand on the back of her neck, pulling her down in to a slow, sweet kiss. Terribly inappropriate for the bridge, but still so new and wonderful that she couldn't bring herself to pull away.

"Alright, alright; you caught us," Sara said with a little smile. "I talked Kallo into giving you tomorrow off. Mostly because you've been working too hard, but a little because I wanted you to myself for a few hours." She took a step back and offered her hand again. "And I really did make dinner. Care to join?"

"Of course I would, you loon." With Sara's hand wrapped around her own, they started back toward the lift. "And while I'm sure you're still up to something more, you look very nice."

"Aw, thanks," Sara said, glancing down at her outfit. "One of the only things I brought along for the ride. Always need a good set of civvies for a first date. Not that this is a real first date or anything! I mean it sort of is, I guess, but I mean it's probably not gonna be anything great. I'll definitely take you somewhere nicer when we're not working thirty hour shifts, but I really hope you'll like this at least a little." She stopped talking abruptly, as if just realizing how much she was floundering, and frowned at herself.

Suvi leaned over and kissed her briefly on the cheek. "You are adorable. And whatever it is, I'll love it." She then noticed that she was being lead towards the ramp to the meeting room rather than the lift at the back of the ship.

"Where are we …" she trailed off when they reached the top only to find the entire crew standing around the table rather expectantly. Even Kallo snuck in behind them, tapping Suvi on the shoulder as he passed. A holographic representation of a fire flickered in the middle of the very expensive communication device meant to remain open for emergency QEC connections at all times.

"Alright, they're here now!" Drack said. "Let's get the show on the road. I wanna see this." Suvi turned to Sara, completely confused.

"So, uh," Sara started awkwardly. "I know it's kind of hard to keep track of days when there aren't really 'days' in space, but since we missed New Year's I really tried and I'm pretty sure tonight is the 25th?"

"Get the stuff out," Vetra reminded from across the table, prompting Sara to jump nearly to attention before scrabbling about for something on a shelf under the table. When she righted herself, she was holding a can of something, a bottle whisky, and a genuine hard copy of a book.

"Burns Night," she said, smiling nervously.

"Come on, let's get to the stabbing part," Liam prodded gleefully. "You Scots are wild."

"Whoa, whoa; who's stabbing what?" Lexi interjected.

"Ryder's going to stab the can," Cora answered dryly.

Vetra looked aghast. "Ryder, do you know how hard it was to find that haggis stuff? Very hard! Harder than the scotch that I can't even drink."

"I have to!" Sara protested, setting the can very carefully upright and stable with one hand while flipping through the book with the other. "At least I think I do. Honestly, Suvi; the cultural database's blurb on this sounded super made up, so I'm probably just gonna make a damn fool of myself, but I got everything I could." She made a little triumphant sound when she found _Address to a Haggis_ , then promptly spun up her omni-tool and generated a combat blade.

"Food, drink, and family, right?" she asked, turning to Suvi. Suvi could only nod, hands over her mouth in disbelief and on the edge of tears.

"Alright," Sara said resolutely. "Let's see which of these I butcher worse."

It was the poem, far and away, and Suvi knew in her bones that she would never love another woman the way she loved Sara Ryder.

* * *

The Hyperion really was a marvel. Suvi had become familiar with the schematics of the ship over the last year through the cross-training initiative between the science and engineering teams, but they paled to standing in real thing. To wake up in a place like this, so grand and full of promise, must have been amazing. Even if the Scourge managed to make that as short lived as it was.

When she made it to the Cryo deck, she found her pace slowing the closer she got to the adjacent med bay. Intellectually she knew she had no reason to be nervous, but the emotional side of things was another story entirely. Her life in the Milky Way was always so busy between classes and research that she'd never really had the time to do the dating thing. She'd never felt deprived of the experience; her work was important and fulfilling. She wasn't expecting anything like Sara to happen to her out here, and she had no idea what to expect on meeting her family.

When she edged around the corner of the open bay door to get a read on the situation, Sara spotted her immediately and waved her over. She was sitting on the edge of a hospital bed with a man who was unquestionably her brother.

The first thing Suvi noticed as she walked over was that he was far taller than Sara, the difference apparent even while they were seated. They shared many other features though; the same black hair, green eyes, and lovely dark complexion that Suvi had seen in historical vids of Alec Ryder as well. As she got closer, she heard that they also had precisely the same laugh.

"Hey!" Sara said, hopping to her feet. "How'd it go at Nerd HQ?" Suvi rolled her eyes at the moniker and added another week to the count of time before she could introduce Sara to Dr. Aridana. "Very well. The team's been working with Pathfinder Rix's surveillance data to improve all the scout ships' sensor arrays. We'll be able to have eyes on you non-stop when we get to the station now."

"I'm glad someone on the Tempest knows what they're doing," Sara's brother chimed in, easing himself to standing with a noticeable wince before extending his hand. "Scott Ryder, by the way. Great to meet you."

"It's nice to meet you, too, Scott," Suvi replied as she shook his hand. "I'm –"

"Dr. Suvi Anwar, Ph.D., MSc." He grinned at the surprise that must have been apparent in her expression. "Lots of time for research when you're stuck in a hospital bed. Like I wasn't going to learn everything I could about the brilliant woman my little sister managed to convince she wasn't a total loser, anyways."

"Hey," Sara said indignantly, punching Scott lightly on the shoulder. "One; I'm two minutes older than you. Two; Shut up. I'm delightful."

"Alright, alright," Scott groused amiably, shoving Sara back with a grin that he quickly turned to Suvi.

"Don't take me too seriously, Doc. This is just the first time Sare's ever brought a girl home. I always figured it was on account of her being, well… _her_ , but as it turns out she just had discerning taste."

"Damn right," Sara confirmed, giving Suvi a look that warmed her right down to her toes.

"Hey now, be cute on your own time," Scott protested. "I only get a few visiting hours, and I want to talk dirt. Specifically Heleus dirt." Sara looked confused but the statement, but Suvi was thrilled.

"You read my paper?" she asked. Scott nodded, holding up a data pad that had been sitting on his lap. "Like I said, plenty of time for research. I haven't spent as much time around smart people as Sara, but I think I mostly got the gist. You really think we could start growing things at the outposts as soon as next year?"

"I do! We've been running and monitoring controlled grows in different strata of soil from every world where we've been able to collect a detailed sample," she started with excitement, diving into the details she'd been forced to cut from the copy logged for final publication. Scott seemed genuinely interested and asked very thoughtful follow-up questions. She knew agricultural research wasn't Sara's cup of tea, but the warm hand she felt stroking up and down her back as she talked was just as lovely.

"Wow," Scott said when Suvi wrapped up what had quickly devolved into a lecture. He turned to Sara and said plainly, "Never let her go, okay?"

"Wasn't planning on it," Sara returned with a smile.

* * *

Suvi lay back and stretched her arms over her head with a sigh, relishing the special kind of relaxation that only came after an inhumanly long day. Her legs and arms felt warm and loose and after more than an hour long shower, her back was finally starting to un-tense as well.

When Sara flopped down gracelessly at her side, she cracked open an eye and grinned.

"Oh, _God_ ," Sara groaned into the pillow. "Bed. So good. Why are we ever not in bed?"

"Kett, Remnant, Roekaar, homicidal indigenous fauna," Suvi started ticking off on her fingers.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah." Sara rolled over on her back with another happy little sigh, and Suvi found she could no longer resist. She leaned herself up on her elbow long enough to edge over to Sara's side of the bed, then buried her face against Sara's neck and breathed deeply.

"You smell really good," she mumbled into Sara's skin.

"That's 'cause my lady felt like getting frisky in the shower," Sara replied, running a hand through Suvi's damp hair.

"Considering the amount of ash and detritus you were still covered in even after decontaminating this afternoon, I'd say that was pretty smart of her." Anger flared briefly as the words left her mouth. Without much conscious thought she shifted her body over Sara's, bracing slightly above her on a forearm. "I swear if Kallo doesn't space Peebee tonight, I might do it myself. Who the hell launches an escape pod full of people without an exfil plan, let alone into an active volcano on an uncharted –"

Sara leaned up abruptly, and the end of the sentence was lost in a muffled sound against her mouth. "Everyone is fine," she reminded with the next breath between them. "We'll get a replacement pod when we get back to Nexus. But right now, if the band is still taking requests, I would very much like to see where you were going with that first thought."

"You're impossible," Suvi laughed, leaning back down to deepen the contact nonetheless. "We just burned through a week's worth of hot water rations and you're still not done?"

"Guess I was in the Alliance for too long," Sara replied as Suvi worked, breath hitching and fingers starting to scrape down Suvi's back. "You know what they say about sailors."

Suvi did know, and having worked adjacent to the military for several years even taken it upon herself to test the veracity of the claim once or twice. The fleeting thought of Sara in dress blues caused her to add an edge of teeth, which in turn made Sara buck up deliciously against her leg.

It was easy to drift into fantasy. To think of what they could do once the outposts were safe and settled and the weight of everyone's survival was lifted from them. Suvi imagined the lake on Eos, the one she watched growing every day in the raw data. When this was done she would find a safe, quiet stretch of shoreline to take Sara. She would lay her down in the sand, just to see how well her dark hair would stand out against the pale red earth. She would feel the glare of the late afternoon sun on her own back, smell the air and water and life all around them, and make love to her right there with nothing but the sound of the tide ebbing and flowing –

The connection hit her like a train.

"Whoa, shit!" Sara yelped, bolting up when Suvi wrenched herself away without any warning. "Are you okay? Did I hurt you? What's –"

"I know how to find Meridian," Suvi interrupted, leaping off the bed and scrambling to find her clothes. "It would have moved through the Scourge like a ship on the ocean. If we can find enough data on it, draw out the currents, we could build a nav chart to upload in in the shipyard you found in Khi Tisara –"

"And the Remnant will lead us right to it," Sara finished, swinging her legs over the side of the bed with a wry smile.

"Exactly! I mean the metaphor's a little crude, but it's testable. I just need to run the numbers we already have to confirm the theory and…" She trailed off, having finally located her bra in the haphazard pile of clothing and abruptly remembering how it came off in the first place.

"Don't worry about it," Sara laughed, leaning down to dig something out of the pile herself. "This is like page six of the 'So You've Fallen In Love With A Genius' handbook. At least take my sweatshirt so you don't have to get back in your lab coat."

Suvi accepted the garment with dumb silence. She had known, of course she had known, but this was the first time Sara had said the words aloud. Confident and careless, like they had a hundred years together to sort the rest out.

"I love you, too," Suvi returned clumsily. Sara just winked at her, grabbed her by the hand, and kissed the knuckles.

"I know," she said. "Now get out of here and go save the day. I'll be here when you're done."

* * *

It should have been one of the proudest moments of her life. Her theory hadn't just panned out, it had lead them to the greatest technological achievement ever witnessed by sentient life. Trying to process the incoming data made her feel like a child, like the first time she ever wandered into a mosque, distantly aware of the profundity of what she was experiencing and utterly lost in the unending stream of stimulus.

She almost didn't notice when SAM's connection flickered.

Kallo frowned and looked up from his display. "Suvi, did you…" he stopped himself short when SAM flickered again and spoke in a voice that was not his own.

"Congratulations, Pathfinder. A great day for us all."

"Oh, _shite_ ," Suvi breathed out.

The shattered fragments of transmission that managed to clear the interference were like listening to a horror vid. The Archon just kept talking, calmly explaining his own cleverness while Sara _screamed_. As if to inflict the most pain possible, he strengthened the connection when it fell to its weakest.

"Fall to darkness, Pathfinder," he said. "You were almost worthy." The sound of an armored body crashing to the floor followed, then the thick, terrified choking of someone without control of their lungs trying to breathe before the line went dead. Suvi's entire body froze in place. SAM was Sara's nervous system, and SAM was gone.

There was no movement, no thought, nothing. Numbness pricked in her hands, crawling up her arms as her station lit up with emergency communications. The Kett had boarded the Nexus, focused their attention on the Hyperion. Kallo was working frantically with Gil to establish any kind of connection, get any kind of direction.

In the flood of panicked alarms, she looked up just in time to pick out a flash of text that was routed to her personal line from an account she didn't recognize.

Take care of S, it said.

The words flashed once, twice, and faded. In the same instant, SAM's basic functions flared back to life. Data from the Remnant ships began to surge back through the ship's systems, raw and half-translated from the Jardaan glyphs. Frantic reports showed the Hyperion detaching from the Nexus, entering FTL but blasting out its travel vectors for anyone to find. The pieces clicked into place, and the plan was laid bare in Suvi's mind.

SAM was Sara's nervous system, and while he was mute and fractured he was not gone. Sara would be able to breathe.

Suvi could move.

The work blurred into a single stream of thought, distance vectors, comm integrity, inexplicable gravity in unbelievable formations, and she hurled herself into it. When Gil cobbled together an analog shortwave to raise the ground team, they could barely hear them through the electrical interference but they were _there_.

When they reached the landing area, Sara stumbled to a Remnant console and did an impossible thing.

* * *

Suvi had never been in this place before. The moment before the end.

There was a reason for that, of course. This was a moment for heroes, not for frightened academics who never should have left the lab pacing a trench through the bridge of a starship. How did anyone bear this feeling, this incomprehensible maelstrom of weight and emptiness, desperately wishing for the end while clinging to the hope that it wouldn't come?

The door to the bridge hissed open, but she didn't bother to check who entered. Kallo surely needed his own time and space to prepare the ship. When it was not his voice, but Sara's that offered a weak, "Hey," Suvi looked up sharply.

Sara was still in pain, the effects of it visible even at a distance. They were already so close to their approach vector that she hadn't even bothered to change out of the jumpsuit she wore under her armor. The blood shed in her impossible communion with the Remnant was still drying on her chin.

"How many times does a girl have to die to get a hug up in here?" she asked, trying to smile. The distance between them was covered in four steps. Sara's arms wrapped around her hard enough to border on pain.

"I swear, I _will_ turn you in to Lexi if you die again," Suvi said, trying to keep her voice light and joking but failing utterly. Sara made a sound almost like a laugh, turning her face into Suvi's shoulder as she held on even harder.

"Tell me you love me," she asked, barely above a whisper.

"You know I do." She stroked a hand over Sara's hair, still stiff with sweat and mussed from her helmet. "Tell me you'll come home."

"You know I will." Sara took a shaky breath and loosened her grip, starting to pull away. "Just a handful of Kett, right? Not like the fate of intelligent life in the known galaxy is on me or anything."

"Not just you," Suvi replied. "I have comms from every faction in the cluster confirming they're on their way. You've quite a way with words, you know; I almost want to go charging into battle, too."

Sara went a little pale. "Okay, when you say things like that, 'Teaching Suvi How to Shoot Better' rockets way up list of things we need to do when this is done. That Nakmor scout still thinks _I_ was the one who shot him in the ass." Suvi laughed before she could stop herself, shoving Sara's shoulder like she would have at any other joke made at her expense. For a breath, it all felt almost normal.

"Ryder, we need to get you suited up. Get to the launch bay," a staticky voice said over the jury-rigged intercom. Sara's jaw went stiff.

"Guess that's that," she said, swallowing hard. She let her hands linger on Suvi as long as possible when she stepped back. Suvi barely restrained the sudden, frantic need to hold them there. "Stay safe, okay?" Sara said. She held herself tall and met Suvi's eyes.

"I'll be home soon."

* * *

Of all Meridian's wonders, Suvi continued to find herself most fascinated with the air. Chemically speaking it was remarkably similar in composition to all the home planets of the species now gathered, but the exact proportions were closest to those found on Earth. There was just a touch more oxygen in the lower atmosphere, though she wondered if they needed to find a new word to describe the meteorological layout of an inside-out planet. Two and a half weeks had passed since the Claiming, as they were calling it now, and the temperature had stayed a lovely, constant twenty-two degrees the entire time.

One of her new favorite pastimes was taking Sara for walks as she recuperated.

"Are you up to another hill?" she asked, laying a hand over Sara's where it was resting on her arm. "The view's to die for."

"I'm starting to think this whole place might be," Sara replied with a little smile. "But yeah, let's do it. Maybe a little slower, though? Can't seem to get a good breath today."

Suvi nodded and quickly slowed their pace by half. The fight for Meridian's core had left Sara with a terrifying amount of internal injury and even weeks after the fact, an admission like that meant she was in a bad way.

"You're going to say 'You shouldn't push yourself so hard, we have all the time in the world and you have to take some to get better'," she said as Suvi opened her mouth to say something remarkably close to just that. Sara gave her a sideward grin. "I do listen sometimes, you know. But I'm going stir crazy in there. I want to be out in the world with you."

"There's time enough for both," Suvi reminded, slowing again when she felt Sara lean more of her weight on Suvi's arm. "And you know Scott will never let you live it down if he's back on his feet before you."

"Oh, low blow," Sara whined. "He's not even awake yet and you two are already colluding." Suvi chuckled, squeezing her hand over Sara's as they crested the rise.

"Wow," Sara breathed. It was Suvi's favorite sound, the awe and excitement of Sara's voice upon making a new discovery. The shallow valley below them was picturesque, verdant and alien in the way the whole of Andromeda had been promised to them. She helped Sara sit down on the loamy soil and held her close, watching the world go by in reverent quiet.

"Do you want to stay here?" Sara asked.

"Sometimes," Suvi answered honestly. "This place has so much to teach us. It could be lifetimes before we get beyond even scratching the surface. Who wouldn't want to be a part of that?" She smoothed her hand over the ground as she talked, the smooth stalks of the grass-analogue bending easily under the pressure. "But there's still so much to be done elsewhere. Development at the outposts, expanding the Nexus. Plenty of paths to find still."

"Fuck pathfinding," Sara said lightly. "If you want to stay here, consider me retired."

Suvi didn't doubt she meant it, but scoffed and nudged at her side nonetheless. She was tired now, but Sara was a restless woman. Retirement would bore her inside a week.

Sara sighed, leaning her head against Suvi's shoulder and taking a slow, deep breath of the sweet smelling air. "What's on your mind?" Suvi asked, brushing her fingers against Sara's hair.

"Nothing," Sara said as she closed her eyes.

"I just can't believe we made it."

 **The End.**


End file.
